Saturday, October 3, 2015

Pressure Cooker Beef in Red Wine with a Boulangère Potato Top

I love my pressure cooker. It saves time and means you can make all those brilliant long cook stews and casseroles in a fraction of the time and it makes the best stocks and soups.

This is slightly more complicated that my usual "bung it all in the pan and pressure it for 15 minutes", but it's well worth it.

2lb stewing steak

2 smallish red onions

Half a Dozen small carrots

1 large stick of celery

4 medium potatoes thinly sliced

2 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Half a bottle of red wine

Half a pint of good meat stock

3 bay leaves

2 large sprigs of thyme

some rape seed oil or similar for frying.

A knob of butter

A rounded teaspoon of potato flour

Scrub and trim the carrots. Cut the tops
off the onion(s) but leave the bottoms on removing any root strands. Cut them
into 4 wedges (8 if you’re using one large one) and remove the outer peel.

Chop the celery and finely dice the
bacon.

Dry the the steak on kitchen towel and
season lightly with salt and freshly ground black pepper. In a heavy bottomed
oven proof casserole, over a medium heat, brown the steak in batches so there’s only a
single layer in the dish. Take your time doing this - you will probably get
liquid coming out of the meat keep going until it has all evaporated and the
meat is really well browned. Transfer the meat to your pressure cooker as it’s
done. When it’s all well browned pour half a bottle of red wine over it and add
the stock. Add the bay and thyme and bring to the boil and cook until the
liquid is reduced by about a quarter. Put the lid with its weight on the pressure
cooker and bring up to pressure and then turn down so it is hissing contentedly
and leave it like this for about ten minutes.

In the mean time brown the vegetables
(except the potatoes) with the bacon in the casserole dish, adding some more of
the oil and scraping the meat residue from the pan as you go. When they are
browned add a splash of wine to the pan and stir well to de-glaze it.

Take the pressure cooker off the heat and
reduce the pressure quickly by running it under a cold tap (be careful when you’re
moving it not to dislodge the weight).

Heat the oven to about 200C

Put the browned vegetables, bacon and
deglazing liquid in the pressure cooker with the meat.

Put the potatoes in the steamer basket
that came with your pressure cooker and put that on top of the meat and
vegetables. Replace the lid of the cooker, bring it back up to pressure and
cook for 10 minutes.

While that’s doing melt the butter in the
casserole and add the potato flour and cook gently for a minute or two.

Reduce the pressure in the cooker as
before. Carefully remove the basket with the potatoes in. Put the meat and veg
in the casserole dish and give it a good stir. Take the potatoes out of the
basket and put them on top of the meat and put the whole lot in the oven for
about 20 minutes or half an hour until the potatoes start to brown...